


High Stakes

by Gairid



Category: Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 22:04:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1363357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gairid/pseuds/Gairid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Armand and Louis spend a little time in Atlantic City  c. 1925</p>
            </blockquote>





	High Stakes

**Author's Note:**

> Drabble Dimanche 3.24.14 Prompts: Aging, Fountain, Blossom 300 Words

We were seated by the fountain on the patio of the grand Traymore Hotel in Atlantic City. This was an older, more sedate crowd than could be found at the Ritz-Carlton where Nucky Johnson’s liquor flowed freely in spite of the 18th Amendment and I was edgy and bored.

“You are telling me you have never contemplated aging?” I said insistently.

“We mightn’t look it, but we age. Sometimes we even change. What is there to contemplate?”

We had been over this topic more than once and I knew he had no further elucidations to share. It made me peevish when Louis would not engage in such conversations. I gave him a sour look to make it clear that I was reading him and was not bothered to dissemble about it; he regarded me with his usual infuriating passivity. I refrained from invective; he was as impervious to it as he was to my attempts to draw him into conversation if he was not in the mood to engage.

I should leave. I should do it now, tonight, but I knew I would not; not yet. There was still the lure of those nights he would share my bed and the red of his blood would stain the perfection of his skin, white as oleander blossoms. His passivity was close enough to submission to ignore his indifference once whatever passion I could elicit from him was spent; it was sweet, so sweet to hear him keen. But like oleander, the sweetness belied the bitter, poisoned heart.

Capitulation, then, at least for now. I knew he had one passion, a fleeting one, but when engaged it was intoxicating to watch his subtle mastery. I rose. “It’s early. We have plenty of time to walk the boardwalk before Nucky’s high stakes game.”

FIN


End file.
